A body of research has been conducted in which lasers are used to induced phase-change (create a plasma) on solid surfaces and in gases, in order to deduce atomic related spectral information, i.e., laser induced breakdown spectroscopy. Similarly, there is a body of research in which practitioners have used laser illumination to generate acoustic surface waves, in which Fourier analysis is applied to the acoustic signal, in order to measure non-destructively various physical parameters. See for example, A Harata, H Nishimura, T Sawada, “Laser-induced surface acoustic waves and photo-thermal surface gratings generated by crossing two pulsed laser beams”, App. Phys. Let. Vol. 57, (1990) and D Schneider, T Schwarz, H J Scheibe, M Panzner, “Non-destructive evaluation of diamond and diamond-like carbon films by laser induced surface acoustic waves. Thin solid films, vol. 295, pp. 107-116, (1997), both of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
On methodology for detection involves an experimental technique termed optical Light Detection And Ranging, (LIDAR). LIDAR methods, techniques, and instrumentation is a fairly mature and established technique which has proven effective in measuring 3D wind profiles. To a lesser degree there are claims of being able to measure various elemental atmospheric gas components, water vapor, temperature, and other atmospheric parameters. However, such claims are premised on assumptions that that may, or may not be accurate, and these assumptions greatly affect LIDAR derived results, e.g., most LIDAR predictions involve an inverse process that requires important information about aerosol size distribution, shape, and composition, which is rarely known with any degree of accuracy. The main limitation with the LIDAR approach is that it can only measure a parameter called optical backscatter which is a complex function of many phenomena. For example, generally speaking, an optical LIDAR propagates a pulse of energy at a particular wavelength through the atmosphere. As the pulse propagates it undergoes attenuation by aerosol scattering, aerosol absorption, and gaseous absorption (neglecting molecular scattering). A fraction of the original pulse is scattered back (backscattered) to the transmission point, and is detected by an optical detector. The backscatter is effectively the ratio of the power sent out to the power scattered back to the receiver. However, to make use of this type of measurement, practitioners must make important assumptions as mentioned above because atmospheric backscatter is a complex function of both scattering and absorption.